Victory is a term, originally in applied to warfare, given to success achieved in personal combat, after military operations in general or, by extension, in any competition. Success in a military campaign is considered a strategic victory, while the success in a military engagement is a tactical victory. Archetypical victories of good over evil, or of light over dark etc. are a recurring theme in mythology and fairy tales. In terms of human emotion, victory is accompanied with strong feelings of elation; in mythology, victory is often deified, as with the Greek Nike or Roman Victoria.

It is for man to establish the reign of liberty in the midst of the world of the given. To gain the supreme victory, it is necessary, for one thing, that by and through their natural differentiation men and women unequivocally affirm their brotherhood.

There is good, in one view, in feeling that we have crossed the Rubicon and are in for it; then we shall hold stoutly on; otherwise, we may be advancing with only half a heart. And there are important cases in which the difference between half a heart and a whole one makes just the difference between signal defeat and splendid victory.

You ask, what is our aim? I can answer in one word: It is victory, victory at all costs, victory in spite of all terror, victory, however long and hard the road may be; for without victory, there is no survival.

Winston Churchill, speech in the House of Commons, after taking office as Prime Minister (13 May 1940).

The problems of victory are more agreeable than the problems of defeat, but they are no less difficult.

Woe to the Christian Church when it will have been victorious in this world, for then it is not the Church that has been victorious but the world. Then the heterogeneity between Christianity and the world has vanished, the world has won, and Christianity has lost.

There's feasting spread in gorgeous halls,
The lamps flash round the city walls,
And many a flood of lustre falls
O'er many an honoured name.
Turn thou from this, and enter where
Some mother weeps o'er her despair,
Some desolate bride rends her rich hair,
Some orphan joins the cry !
Then back again to the death plain,
Where lie those whom they weep in vain,
And ask, in gazing on the slain,
What art thou, Victory ?

I wish to preach, not the doctrine of ignoble ease, but the doctrine of the strenuous life. … Far better it is to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure, than to rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy much nor suffer much, because they live in that grey twilight that knows neither victory nor defeat.

It is not the critic who counts, not the man who points out how the strong man stumbled, or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena; whose face is marred by the dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs and comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming; who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions and spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best, knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who, at worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly; so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory or defeat.

Theodore Roosevelt, in "Citizenship in a Republic " a speech at the Sorbonne, Paris, France (23 Apirl 1910).

An attitude of moderation is apt to be misunderstood when passions are greatly excited and when victory is apt to rest with the extremists on one side or the other; yet I think it is in the long run the only wise attitude.

If it had not been for these things, I might have lived out my life talking at street corners to scorning men. I might have died, unmarked, unknown, a failure. Now we are not a failure. This is our career and our triumph. Never in our full life could we hope to do such work for tolerance, for justice, for man's understanding of man as now we do by accident. Our words — our lives — our pains — nothing! The taking of our lives — lives of a good shoemaker and a poor fish-peddler — all! That last moment belongs to us — that agony is our triumph.

The people who remained victorious were less like conquerors than conquered.

Augustine, De Civitate Dei (c. 413–426), book 3, chapter 19, trans. as The City of God in Marcus Dods, ed., The Works of Aurelius Augustine vol. 1 (1871), p. 119–20.

I would say to the House, as I said to those who have joined this Government: "I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat".… You ask, what is our aim? I can answer in one word: It is victory, victory at all costs, victory in spite of all terror, victory, however long and hard the road may be; for without victory, there is no survival.

Upon the fields of friendly strife
Are sown the seeds
That, upon other fields, on other days
Will bear the fruits of victory.

Douglas MacArthur, Reminiscences (1964), p. 82. MacArthur wrote these lines while superintendent of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, New York, 1919–1922, and had them engraved over the entrance to the gymnasium.

Be ashamed to die until you have won some victory for humanity.

Horace Mann, baccalaureate address, Antioch College, Yellow Springs, Ohio (1859); Life and Works of Horace Mann, ed. Mrs. Mary Mann, vol. 1 (1868), p. 575. "The motivating principle of Mann's life was nowhere better or more clearly expressed than in the oft-quoted words with which he closed his last Commencement address at Antioch College". Dictionary of American Biography, vol. 6, p. 243. Mann died a few weeks later. He had served in Congress 1848–1853.